Garage Screen presents the first retrospective in Russia of one of the world’s most significant filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami—the first Iranian director to win a Palme d'Or at Cannes. Kiarostami is among the few turn-of-the-century filmmakers who were able to naturally capture the very spirit of cinema—its unknowable nature and deeply poetic, irrational relationship with reality and the human.
The program includes all of Kiarostami’s features as well as rare shorts and documentaries. Most of these films have been restored.
Kiarostami remains among the most relevant contemporary filmmakers—an internationally acclaimed creator as well as an agent of change, bringing about shifts in the language of film and the moving image of the twentieth century, which continue today. His career, in many ways, has reflected the development of film: from classical (neo)realism through clever experiments with the documentary and imagination to a new vision that erased the boundaries between fact and fiction, as well as between the experience of film and immediate life.
The retrospective consists of five sections. Before the Revolution features Kiraostami’s earliest works shot before the Iranian Revolution. Dismantling the Fourth Wall brings together the films in which he began to explore the nature of film and moving images and their connection to reality. International Recognition contains the best-known and emblematic of his films, which brought Kiarostami international acclaim. Films shown in The Magic of the Digital marked his transition to digital cameras, and A Return to the New presents his films as an acclaimed director, in which he continued to experiment with the language and search for a new form, partially returning to the poetics of his early work.
To accompany the retrospective Garage Screen summer cinema will present a series of public events focused on Iranian history and culture, as well as on Abbas Kiarostami and other Iranian filmmakers. The Museum will also publish the essay The Evidence of Film by Jean-Luc Nancy—the first in the series of Garage Screen publications devoted to film.
Retrospective curator: Evgeny Gusyatinsky.
